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Indonesia is too important for ASEAN alone

Jokowi sent a clear message to ASEAN about the country’s global ambitions through his frank statement on Myanmar.

Kornelius Purba (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Mon, January 10, 2022

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Indonesia is too important for ASEAN alone
G20 Indonesia 2022

Hosting the Group of 20 summit, scheduled for October in Bali, will be the most celebrated global moment for Indonesia since its declaration of independence in 1945.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who is known as an inward-looking leader, will chair the prestigious summit. He has told his Cabinet and top government officials that he will take all possible measures to ensure all the leaders of the world’s largest 20 economies attend the meeting in person. That’s a tall order, as Indonesia has to tame the COVID-19 pandemic to convince the G20 leaders to come to Bali.

Indonesia has hosted several international forums, such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit, consisting of developing and underdeveloped nations, in September 1992 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in November 1994.

The President has prepared himself for the global forum and has lately become more assertive in voicing Indonesia’s stance on various international issues, as evinced by his expression of strong reservations over the Quad, a military alliance involving the United States, Japan, Australia and India that is meant to contain China. The President also openly showed his aversion to the AUKUS military alliance of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In response to China’s maneuvering in the Natuna Sea, Jokowi has taken firm actions to appease his domestic audience while carefully dealing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Jokowi has also shown who’s boss in ASEAN by openly telling Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen not to misuse his rotary chairmanship of the 10-member regional group to derail efforts to make the Myanmar military junta comply with the five-point consensus agreed upon in Jakarta last April. It was the President’s most blunt statement ever to his ASEAN colleagues, even more striking considering his previously low appetite for foreign affairs.

Assuming the presidency of the elite club of the world’s biggest economies has clearly given President Jokowi more confidence in reasserting the country’s de facto leadership of ASEAN, a role that he had ignored since coming to power in 2014. His clear and consistent stance against the military coup in Myanmar will be a key factor for his credibility in directing the course of the G20 this year and in pushing ASEAN to be more adaptive to universal values of democracy and human rights.

We should not forget that the government's administration of 270 million COVID-19 vaccines over the last 11 months, the fifth-largest national vaccination drive after China, India, the US and Brazil, has allowed the country to keep the pandemic at a manageable level. It remains to be seen whether the Omicron variant will change the whole story.

President Jokowi’s move to end the regional group’s “noninterference” principle, as in the Myanmar crisis, likely shocked Hun Sen, as he might have thought he could use the ASEAN chairmanship to unilaterally recognize Myanmar’s junta or to offer compromises, as Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah had previously tried to do but to no avail.

There have been concerns that Myanmar’s generals could easily ignore Indonesia during Cambodia’s leadership. This is not without precedent. When chairing the ASEAN summit in 2012, Hun Sen blatantly deleted the leaders’ statement of concern on the situation in the South China Sea.

Despite all its shortcomings and some domestic problems that have remained unaddressed, like separatism in Papua, Indonesia is internationally recognized as the world’s third-largest democracy, after India and the US.

Indonesia has typically regarded ASEAN as the anchor of its foreign policy. But the time has come for the country to move far beyond ASEAN. Jokowi has sent a clear message to ASEAN member states about the country’s global aspirations through his frank statement on Myanmar.

Indonesia is just too big and too important to let itself be trapped by ASEAN’s rotten practices.

Just two days before Hun Sen departed to Myanmar to meet with the country’s junta leader Gen. Min Aung Hlaing on Jan. 7, President Jokowi bluntly reminded the Cambodian prime minister about the importance of the “implementation of the five-point consensus to bring democracy back to Myanmar through inclusive dialogue”.

On April 24 of last year, the President cohosted an ASEAN emergency summit to discuss the latest situation in Myanmar after Gen. Hlaing toppled the government of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1, with “fabricated” justifications. Hun Sen attended the meeting and openly told the general during the meeting to abide by the agreement because it would be beneficial to Myanmar and the general himself. He cited his own experience with ASEAN during Cambodia’s civil war in the 1980s.

The general was invited in his capacity as the country’s military commander in chief, and ASEAN still has not recognized the junta. The United Nations, too, still refuses to accept the junta as the legitimate authority in Myanmar.

In April of last year, Hlaing agreed to an immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar and constructive dialogue among all parties to seek a peaceful solution. He also agreed to accept a special envoy of ASEAN to facilitate dialogue and to grant the envoy access to all parties concerned. ASEAN also planned to provide humanitarian assistance and the military said it would provide full access for distribution.

“Should there be no significant progress on the implementation of five-point consensus, Myanmar should only be represented at a nonpolitical level at ASEAN meetings,” Jokowi told Hun Sen during their telephone conversation, as quoted by his official Twitter account.

Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi reiterated Indonesia’s position in her annual press statement on Jan. 6. “If there is no progress on the implementation of the Five-Point Consensus, it will be difficult for ASEAN to invite political-level representatives from Myanmar”.

President Jokowi has made it clear that ASEAN should not stay silent when oppression of the people occurs in any of its member countries just because of the "noninterference" principle.

Indonesia is too important for ASEAN alone.

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The writer is a senior editor at The Jakarta Post.

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